How do you make a good prediction?

Choosing your subject is key to accurate predictions, argues Nate Silver in The Signal and the Noise, but is playing it safe always a good thing?

THE pretensions of economics as a science have taken a mighty knock since the financial crisis of 2008. Most economists blithely ignore this great global experiment, and have so far resisted revising their underlying theory.

Yet the financial crisis has engrossed others, among them psychologists and even some philosophers of science. It is the last group, to some extent, that Nate Silver aspires to join in writing The Signal and the …